Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber

Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber , also called by its initial JJSS , born Jean-Jacques Schreiber the February 13rd 1924 with Paris, died the November 7th 2006 with Fécamp, was a Journaliste, Essayiste and Politician French.

Youth

Resulting from a Jewish influential family of Prussian origin, Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber is born in 1924. He is the oldest son of Emile Servan-Schreiber, deputy manager of the newspaper the Echoes, and of Denise Brésard.

Enjoying all the attention of his/her mother, JJSS is a gifted and hard-working child. As of adolescence, his/her father involves it with him in the meetings of his circle where personalities like the minister Raoul Dautry meet. Received with the Polytechnic school in 1943, it joined de Gaulle with her father and chooses the American die while being formed as fighter pilot in the Alabama. It will not take part however in any aerial combat.

Finishing Polytechnic with the Release, he will never exert his trade of engineer. Impassioned by sciences and the policy, Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber is discovered a taste for the writing and journalism. Very shining, it is engaged with the Monde by Hubert Beuve-Méry in person and becomes at 25 years leader-writer in foreign politics. Its good knowledge of the the United States enables him to specialize on the cold war.

Founder of the Express train at 29 years

Having included/understood well before the French Establishment that the Décolonisation was inescapable and necessary, it signs a series of articles on the Indochinese conflict. That allows him a meeting which will change the course of its life with Pierre Mendès France, appointed the Eure and savagely opposed to the continuation of the French military effort in Indo-China.

Regarding Mendès France as the only man able to leave the France stagnation and the mediocrity of the political personnel IVe Republic, JJSS creates in 1953 the newspaper the Express train with the journalist Francoise Giroud. Their goal is to however make a newspaper general practitioner posting clearly his goal to bring Pierre Mendès France to the capacity. In spite of difficult beginnings, the Express train will be quickly the newspaper of all the innovations, alluring at the same time youth and the intellectuals more for years 1950 and 60.

At only 30 years, Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber is the director of his own newspaper, where will write Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, André Malraux and François Mauriac. Between seizures and censures, the success of the Express train is growing. At the end of one year of existence, the goal of the young team is reached since PMF, following the disaster of Diên Biên Phu, is named President of the Council. JJSS becomes one of its advisers of the shade, by convainquant for example PMF to take his/her friend Mitterrand as Minister of Interior Department.

Near to François Mitterrand like Valery Giscard d'Estaing, which he knew in Polytechnique, JJSS is a virulent and influential leader-writer. Its network also includes/understands men such as Simon Nora and Jacques Duhamel.

When the events begin from Algérie, JJSS and the Express train fight again against certain exactions of the French Army and a colonial war which does not want to say its name. It is mobilized as a lieutenant and will be put under the orders of the colonel Roger Barberot, associated of the General Jacques Pâris de Bollardière, only French general having refused torture by leaving its headquarters. From its Algerian experiment, JJSS will draw its first work “Lieutenant in Algeria” for which it will be marked one moment of attack to moral of the army.

At the end of the years 1950, the notoriety of the Express train extends well beyond the France. Its reforming standpoint leads it to be contacted by the American senator John Kennedy, which is interested of close with the problems of Décolonisation whose case of the Algérie is typical. the Express train will be the first European newspaper to make its " Une" on John Kennedy in 1957. Later, Kennedy will prepare his official visit in France by contacting Mendès France and JJSS in order to know the provisions of the Général de Gaulle in his connection. JJSS and Kennedy will find last once at the beginning of the year 1963 at the White House. JJSS will bring to the US president a book Jules Roy on the conflict in Indo-China. Its goal was to warn the president on a stagnation at the Vietnam. JJSS will keep thereafter very good relationships with the Kennedy family, of which he perhaps hoped to copy the model with his own family. That was worth the nickname of " besides to him; Kennedillon" , launched by François Mauriac.

Opposed to the return of the General de Gaulle in 1958, JJSS sees its newspaper losing of its audience to the beginning of the year 1960. It is one period large personal upheavals for the founder of the Express train . Following a family argument, Servan-Schreiber lose the control of the Échos and JJSS is annoyed with its mentor Mendès France. He divorces his first wife Madeleine Chapsal and separates from his mistress Francoise Giroud to marry Sabine Becq de Fouquières with which he will have four wire: David, Emile, Franklin and Edouard.

In 1964, JJSS decides, following a study that it ordered from his brother Jean-Louis Servan-Schreiber, to transform its newspaper into a News magazine on the model of Time Magazine and Der Spiegel. It is a new stroke of genius! the Express train takes off again and spreads more and more: new technologies, Women's Liberation… the Express train becomes the reflection of the changes of the French company and pulling increases week after week.

The catch of the American Challenge

Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber is in the middle of the years 1960 a rich person press baron and a political leader-writer always with the mounting of the new ideas. By its brilliant analyzes and syntheses, it attracts with him the brains of its generation. the Express train is the principal newspaper of opposition to the Général de Gaulle and counts in her rows some barons of the press of today: Claude Imbert, Jean-François Kahn, Catherine Nay, Michele Cotta or Ivan Levaï.

More and more antigaullist and persuaded that the old General is not any more the man of a modern France, JJSS does not want any more to be satisfied with his role of political observer. He is however influential in the mediums of left. He tries for example to push his friend Gaston Defferre to be presented to the presidential election of 1965. But the countryside of “Mr X” will be a failure. It follows then closely the formation of FGDS, created in order to join together in only one structure the left noncommunist Frenchwoman around Mitterrand and of Mendès France. But JJSS is before a whole agitator of ideas. He considers that its leading articles are not enough to wake up its fellow-citizens on the challenges which France will have to raise in the future. He thus thinks of a possible entry in policy.

He makes at that time the meeting of Michel Albert, scholar working with Brussels for the Common Market. This one enormously provides him economic documentations and reports/ratios that JJSS uses more and more in its leading articles. One of them upsets JJSS: the the United States and Europe would deliver a quiet economic war where Europe seems completely exceeded, so much on the level of the modern methods of the management than of the technological equipment and the capacity of research. Servan-Schreiber finds there a screen basic that he wants to develop in a book shock. But he wants to also bring keys of reading and specific proposals for a counter-offensive. Its book the American Challenge , appeared in 1967, remains today the largest best-seller for a political test. The book is translated into fifteen languages, is sold to million specimens everywhere in the world and is unanimously recognized like very shining.

It is then invited to the four corners of the France and the Europe. It fills the rooms and starts to preach federal Europe having a common currency and a decentralized France.

The resignation of the Général de Gaulle in 1969 persuades it that it has its place in the necessary renewal of the political personnel. Thus he becomes general secretary of the Parti radical socialist in October 1969 and enters the political arena on one level.

A contrasted political career

In 1962, JJSS had taken its first steps in policy in the Pays of Caux which he liked so much. It had been presented to the legislative elections, in the 8th district of the Seine-Maritime, corresponding then to Yvetot, Cany-Barville & Saint-Valery-in-Caux. But it was beaten by Roger Fossé which will become later president of the District council of High-Normandy.

Joint author with Michel Albert of radical Proclamation in 1970, Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber is an atypical politician. Its career is made large combat avant-gardists in France sociologiquement preserving; its choice of the Party Radical socialist was already paradoxical, this formation incarnating middle-class conservatism as of before 1914. He fights firstly for decentralization by regionalization (the Radical party had always been the spearhead of the Jacobinism), for the program stop Concorde in order to economically concentrate the efforts on the Airbus, more profitable, for the stop of the nuclear tests, a reform of the universities and contests, for a righter progressiveness of the income tax, for computerization.

Its positions are very close to the Swedish social democrats. He meets Swedish the Prime Minister besides Tage Erlander and his successor Olof Palme. That it is François Mitterrand with the PS or Michel Rocard with the PSU, the left noncommunist Frenchwoman of 1969-1970 is rather far away from the European social democrats and uses a vocabulary close to the Marxism. JJSS thus brings a new style in the French political scene. It is however clearly of center-left, since it denounces an economy which is “ treating the man with the law that she applies to all things: the law of profitability. Already it mutilates us ” writes it.

In June 1970, Roger Souchal, appointed (UDR) of Meurthe-et-Moselle (district of Nancy - Northern), resigns because of the layout of a highway considered to be too favorable to Metz.
Roger Souchal thinks of being re-elected in an armchair. However, with the invitation of the local director of Is republican and several the notable Nancy ones, JJSS is presented. The business seems impossible, especially that it is about a duel between Parisian “parachuted” against the native, hero of Resistance. Nevertheless, the Nancy ones seem flattered that an influential man is interested in the Lorraine. JJSS starts a new style campaign, using its media deterrent force. It is a success since while having all the left parties like line against him, JJSS arrives at the head at the first turn. It obtains then 55% of the votes in a second turn into triangular since the Communist candidate had been maintained. This election is a shock in the French political community.

The September 20th of the same year, it is presented against Jacques Chaban-Delmas to Bordeaux. Wanting at all costs in découdre with the majority UDR and the Prime Minister in exercise, JJSS is afflicted lack of combativeness of the left. After François Mitterrand convinced Robert Badinter not to be presented, JJSS is only found in the battle. In spite of its election with Nancy, it is presented again. Whereas it flew of success in success, it will be clearly demolishes with Bordeaux, which will carry a heavy blow to its brand image. He is however re-elected with Nancy in 1973. In 1978, it sees on the other hand its election invalidated by the Constitutional council and loses the by-election against the Socialist Yvon Tondon the September 24th.

At the national level, Servan-Schreiber refuses any agreement with the Communist party of Georges Marchais and does not want to thus make alliance with François Mitterrand. Its center strategy, marked by the creation of a coalition with the democratic Center and several small formations of center-left within the reforming Mouvement will never function and break little by little the Radical party of which he became president in 1971.

JJSS is a brilliant speaker having a true capacity to convince. It tries to bring in the public debate of the innovative topics against what it calls “the State-UDR”, i.e. seizure of the gaullists on all the French political apparatus. Bad negotiator, it will never manage to enter the power plays to have a role there. He will be briefly Minister for the Reforms May 27th with the June 9th 1974 but will be drawn aside by Jacques Chirac, which calls it “the turlupin”, for his opposition to the resumption of the nuclear tests. He is however elected president of the District council of Lorraine of 1976 with 1978 by beating Pierre Mesmer.

Not wanting more to direct to the daily newspaper its newspaper the Express train , which it used much to finance its political action and to diffuse its ideas, it decides to sell it in 1977 with the business man Jimmy Goldsmith. Without this invaluable support, its political career sinks quickly. He is however the founding father of the UDF to help president Giscard d'Estaing to counter the rise to power of Jacques Chirac to the legislative elections of 1978. But the loss of its mandate of deputy of Nancy reduces its influence considerably.

In 1979, JJSS leaves the Radical party, at the time of the European elections, to present, with Francoise Giroud, the list “Employment, Égalité, Europe”. Obtaining only 1,84% of the voices, Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber puts a term at his political career.

Financially, it is almost ruined. The fortune which it had withdrawn from the sale of the Express train was completely spent for its last campaigns. For JJSS, the money was only one means to help it to animate the ideological debate. Man in a hurry and visionary, it was interested rather little in art, the music or even the gastronomy. It will on the other hand devote much time to its four sons.

The eveillor of the shade

JJSS written in 1980 a second book with success, the world Challenge , devoted partly to the technological takeoff of the Japan by computerization. He then plays of his influence near Gaston Defferre in order to convince Mitterrand to create an institute of computerization of France. It will be the data-processing World center and human resources (CMIRH) directed, during its creation, by Nicholas Negroponte and Seymour Papert. JJSS is, as it was it with Mendès France and Giscard d'Estaing, an adviser of the shade of the president, a eveillor and even says one a “visitor of the evening”.

In spite of the arrival with Paris several large researchers in data processing and some successes with State education and in agriculture, the data-processing Center is a financial drain, sanctioned in a report/ratio of the Court of Auditors, and will be closed in 1985. It however made it possible some young French very early to be impassioned for the data processing, of which some became enquiring brilliances and engineers. The Center itself does not have with its credit any discovery.

JJSS flies away then for the the United States with its four sons so that they are formed with the Université Carnegie Mellon with Pittsburgh, high place of data-processing research and neurocognitives sciences. It directs the international relations of the university and courses of “strategic reflection give to it” before returning in France. It writes in same time two volumes of memories appeared in 1991 and 1993.

Reached of a neurological degeneration affecting its memory, JJSS writes its last article in 1996 before giving up any activity of foreground. It however was due to assist in April 2001 to the public diffusion of documentary, always new in France, on the General of Bollardière. The recognition of the exemplary courage of his/her former comrade in arms was his last engagement.
It will make then a very last public appearance in January 2003 at the time of funerals of Francoise Giroud.

In the last years of its life, he lived near his wife Sabine, between his apartment of Neuilly-sur-Seine and the family home of Veulettes-sur-Mer.

As it wished it, its sons took the changing. David, his oldest son, is recognized today for its brilliances work in neuropsychology. He is the author of a book which created sensation Guérir the stress and the depression, without drugs nor psychoanalysis which would approach them: 700000 sold specimens. Franklin, Emile and Edouard are specialists in new technologies, information markets and of Data mining.

Family

Jean-Claude Servan Schreiber, politician.

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